As a lifelong Republican who has held high office in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor, is not someone who normally considers voting Democrat.
Yet, such is the strength of the 71-year-old Washington veteran’s disaffection with Mr Trump’s presidency, that this is precisely how he intends to cast his vote in November’s U.S. presidential election. Rather than voting for the president he served for 17 months as National Security Advisor until his resignation last year, Mr Bolton says he intends to vote for Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate.
“In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton,” he said. “Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again. My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back.”
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Telegraph prior to publication of his scathing book on the Trump presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Mr Bolton insisted that, by casting his vote for Mr Biden, he was not betraying his Republican roots because he did not believe that Mr Trump represented the party’s cause.
“The president does not have a philosophical grounding or strategy,” he explained. “He does not know the difference between the national interest of the U.S., and the interests of Donald Trump. There is confusion over the national interest and his personal interest, which is very dangerous for the country.”
Much of Mr Bolton’s criticism of America’s 45th president stems from his concern at the way Mr Trump runs his administration.
“He came in with very little personal knowledge of how government worked, and he had no interest in learning,” he claimed. “There has been no president in the past century who has followed this approach.”
And Mr Bolton, who previously served as US Ambassador to the UN under President George W Bush, says he felt compelled to write the book to let the American people know how their country was being run.
“When you are in a senior position you have an obligation to tell the truth,” he explained. “I was concerned after 17 months in the administration that he (Mr Trump) did not have the requisite competence to be president, and the American people need to know about that.”
Mr Bolton’s account of his time working at the White House has already caused a storm of controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, with significant passages being leaked in advance, such as his claim that Mr Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jingping to help him win this year’s election contest, and the suggestion that Mr Trump was not aware Britain was a nuclear-armed power.
The White House has responded by trying to halt publication, claiming that it contains classified information. Mr Bolton also claims that he was harassed when writing the book by the Trump administration, which obstructed his Twitter account and denied him access to unclassified documents. Mr Trump has personally attacked Mr Bolton, denouncing him as a”disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war,” while Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, has denounced his former colleague as a “traitor.”
But Mr Bolton remains unrepentant about his decision to write the book, and has been buoyed by a Washington court rejecting the Trump administration’s lawsuit on Saturday, which means publication can go ahead as scheduled tomorrow. Mr Bolton believes the Trump administration’s main objective was to prevent publication before November’s election, and rejects the claim his book contains classified material.
“I have years of experience of dealing with sensitive national security issues, and I do not want to have anything in the book that might hurt America’s national interests,” he said. “I wanted to lay the facts out on key foreign policy and domestic issues and let the American people decide for themselves. I want to put this in front of the American people so they can read for themselves what was really going on. This is a history of how not to be president.”
During his tenure as Mr Trump’s National Security Advisor between April 2018 and September 2019, Mr Bolton, who is regarded as one of the Republican Party’s more hawkish exponents, played a key role in helping to formulate the Trump administration’s approach to a number of key policy issues, including North Korea, Iran and Nato. He tendered his resignation after falling out with Mr Trump over the president’s decision to invite a delegation of Taliban leaders to visit Camp David, which was subsequently revoked after Mr Bolton’s departure from the West Wing.
The former adviser is scathing about Mr Trump’s ability to manage a government. “The President behaves as though this is a small family-owned business, and the issues are just far too important for the country to be run like this.
“It means there is no consistent theme or strategy. A decision made one day can easily be changed the next.” Not surprisingly, Mr Bolton is particularly critical of Mr Trump’s handling of key foreign policy and national security issues, from developing long-term strategies on issues like China and Russia, to tackling more immediate issues such as the threat of nuclear proliferation from countries like Iran and North Korea.
“There is no long term strategy for Russia and China,” he said. “The North Korean negotiations have failed to the extent that North Korea blew up the building it built with South Korea and has continued work on its nuclear and missile programmes. And Iran has not been contained over the past three years.
“It is on issues like this that Trump’s lack of competence becomes more clear.”
Mr Bolton believes the president is now “circling the wagons” ahead of November’s election. While in the past the president could call on experienced and seasoned national security experts – the so-called “Axis of Adults” – to advise him on critical issues, most of them – including Mr Bolton – are no longer working for the administration. This is because, in Mr Bolton’s worlds, “The President had a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who was trying to give him advice.”
Of particular concern for Mr Bolton is his criticism that the president believes having a good relationship with other world leaders is the key to success. “He believes that if he has good relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, then we have good relations with China. And if he has a bad relationship with Theresa May, then we have a bad relationship with Britain. Leaders like Xi understand they represent their country’s interests: I am not sure Trump does.”
Mr Bolton concedes that relations between London and Washington were strained under Mrs May’s premiership, although “I do not blame Theresa May. There were differences on important issues”. Relations have improved since Boris Johnson became prime minister
In his book, Mr Bolton expresses surprise that Mr Johnson, during his stint as Foreign Secretary, would often contact Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, rather than going through the normal diplomatic channels.
“I do not blame him for doing this. The reason he called him was probably because he could not find anyone else who knew what was going on in the administration. For the Trump management style is not to have any management style.”
A strong advocate of the so-called “Special Relationship” between Britain and the U.S., Mr Bolton would like to see the prime minister being more pro-active on two key issues, namely the Iranian nuclear deal, and allowing the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei access to Britain’s 5G network.
On the Iran deal, he says Britain should look at its flaws and realise that “it is never coming back to life.” And on Huawei, while he acknowledges the government has moved away from Theresa May’s support for Huawei since Mr Johnson took office, “the UK bureaucracy has not recognised the threat of Huawei, which is an extremely serious problem.”
Mr Bolton believes it is in Britain’s interests to take both these issues seriously, as they could have an impact on the government’s future dealings with the Trump administration.
“Under Boris Johnson you have a different dynamic – it is all about the personal relationship,” he concluded. “But if he loses that, we could be back in the soup we were in before.”